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And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

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Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#151

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

pianopatrick wrote: post #52
californical wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m guessing there’s a bit of breathing room at the lower end of the system - there will be people who become drug addicts or have major mental health breaks and lose everything. And ideally we have good safety nets that find these people and give them resources and treatment, but some people will refuse everything and end up in bad situations of homelessness due to their drug and/or mental health crises. And even in…

You could also have "zero homeless" if you had a certain amount of cheap housing that even drug addicts and mentally ill people could afford. Or where the cost of helping them is not too much. Like some housing that was built to be closer to "indestructible" than "nice" and was small, like 200 - 300 sq ft.

>if you had a certain amount of cheap housing that even drug addicts and mentally ill people could afford.

That was absolutely free, $0?

>Like some housing that was built to be closer to "indestructible" than "nice" and was small, like 200 - 300 sq ft.

We already have those housing units. They have concrete "beds", toilet-sink combos made out of stainless steel, and a thick steel door that can't be burned by arson. Nothing flammable is allowed within them (save the non-homeless person). The technology exists, and the homeless are actually welcome there. People get mad when they are homed thus, though.

Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#152

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

cardanome wrote: post #72
cwmoore wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But we have built so many enduring systems that rely on bad apples to function the way the do. See "insurance pricing", "private prisons", and "justice enforcement". In the real world, the ideal number of jails or homeless people is neither zero nor "all of them".

The ideal number of jails and homeless people is zero. Obviously you will not reach that literally. That's why it is an ideal number, not a real number. It is still a good and worthy goal. Finnland for example has nearly eradicated homelessness. It is not literally zero but 0.08% which is pretty good. You can also reduce the crime rate dramatically by better social security, education, easier access to mental health…

>Finnland for example has nearly eradicated homelessness. It is not literally zero but 0.08% which is pretty good.

If we had Finland's winters, I think we could eradicate homelessness by January.

Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#153

Post by fragmede »

I think answer in this day and age, is to invoke Skynet, and give an LLM control of the system. Glue a local model that works without Internet to it, and give it guard rails, and give it a bunch of system instructions defining the rules on what to let though. It wouldn't be perfect, but what system is?

Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#154

Post by blooalien »

cobbzilla wrote: post #124
blooalien wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What can I do to help? Nothing you can do to help me specifically. I'm a lost cause at this point. I see no way back from where I'm at. I literally see zero hope for the future of humanity or this truly amazing planet we were fortunate enough to populate for a short while. If you truly do see some sort of future that doesn't end in dystopia or apocalypse, then you can help by doing everything in your power to work…

Sending thoughts of hope. I am reminded of what Fred Rogers would say in times like these. Fred Rogers often told this story about when he was a boy and would see scary things on the news: "My mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.' To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother's words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are stil…

> Fred Rogers often told this story about ...

If he were still alive, I'd vote Fred Rogers for Emperor of Earth all day long. One of the rare few humans who I'd truly label a genuinely good person. Not a hateful or greedy bone in that man's body as far as I've ever read, seen, or heard about him. I suspect the same of Jim Henson, too. Probably Carl Sagan as well. Maybe also Neil deGrasse Tyson for a more modern (still alive) example of a "good person" (as far as I can tell)? I believe "good people" still exist, but they're sadly not in positions of "power" (and probably wouldn't want to be). A shame, because the ones we've got in charge of things right now won't be happy until the planet is literally on fire from pole to pole and one of them has all the everything all to themselves...

Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#155

Post by nerdsniper »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #150
decimalenough wrote: post #118

> But it is easy to see why some people feel this might open the gateway to messages which, at best, are irrelevant If you're in South Korea, you can expect to get around half a dozen emergency notifications every day . Typical contents include "it's cold, so dress warmly", "roads are icy, so drive carefully", and "Mrs Kim, 79, suffers from dementia and was last seen in Seoul wearing a black coat". You can set your p…

> You can set your phone to filter these out, but then you'll also miss the notification about North Korea commencing artillery bombardment. Do you know why there aren't more granular controls? On my phone in the US the toggleable alert options are: Extreme Threats Severe Threats AMBER alerts (child abduction alerts) Public Safety Messages State and Local Tests

I would have thought so too, but it turns out that the USA seems to have the exact same problem!

Millions of Texans were woken up at 4AM to an "EXTREME" level alert because one police officer was shot when he went to serve an arrest warrant to a suspected burglar at his apartment at 11pm earlier the same night. The officer recovered and was back on duty 5 weeks later. This shooting happened in one of the most remote parts of Texas, so people who were over 700 miles / 1.1 megameter / 12 hour drive away all got the notification at 4AM.

The only option Texans had would have been to disable all alerts entirely, because this was an "EXTREME" level alert.

https://www.404media.co/texas-blue-alert-emergency-notificat...

Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#156

Post by Banou »

> Perhaps you can think of a way to design an alerting system which cannot be abused - but I can't.

Isn't the obvious answer decentralization? Have persons necessary to send that message in different places across the country/outside the country needing to sign it for it to be sent. All taking the responsibility of following protocol in these cases.

Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#157

Post by cobbzilla »

jameskilton wrote: post #3

A good article, but missing one very important word: trust. Civil society only exists when there is a collective general trust that most people are trying to do the right thing. Said society also finds it incredibly important to remove or nullify those who aren't trustworthy because "a rotten apple spoils the whole bunch ". Trust is hard to earn, and easy to lose, and it only takes one person exploiting the trustwort…

I dunno, trust is a good foundation, and then you need some good ole fashioned checks and balances, required transparency & record-keeping.

I sense that the checks-and-balances & record-keeping around mass-force-push SMS in the US are now extremely stringent especially after the Hawaii incident. And I'm OK with the current situation here.

OTOH, the checks-and-balances/transparency situation around LPR camera networks is... basically non-existent. I am not OK with the current situation here.

Both of these situations in the same (relatively) high-trust US. The difference is one has some serious regulations around it, and the other is cowboying shit.

Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#158

Post by protocolture »

fragmede wrote: post #147
protocolture wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Requiring strong proof that the message is authentic before sending "Before Sending" is the lynchpin here. The receiver needs to be performing verification, and have the ability to blacklist sources. Which requires distributed infra.

Some sort of chain... of blocks, that would require distributed consensus before the message would go out? Hmm...

Yep.

I had a go at trying to sketch out a protocol for this years ago, that was low enough level to be actually mildly censorship resistant and also pay out for middle men successfully routing traffic and there was something like 10-100 times more protocol traffic on network than actual packets. It was a mess.

Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#159

Post by pianopatrick »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #151
pianopatrick wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could also have "zero homeless" if you had a certain amount of cheap housing that even drug addicts and mentally ill people could afford. Or where the cost of helping them is not too much. Like some housing that was built to be closer to "indestructible" than "nice" and was small, like 200 - 300 sq ft.

>if you had a certain amount of cheap housing that even drug addicts and mentally ill people could afford. That was absolutely free, $0? >Like some housing that was built to be closer to "indestructible" than "nice" and was small, like 200 - 300 sq ft. We already have those housing units. They have concrete "beds", toilet-sink combos made out of stainless steel, and a thick steel door that can't be burned by arson. N…

>That was absolutely free $0?

Mental illness, drug addiction and homelessness all exist in a range. There are many people who are homeless, mentally ill or addicted to drugs who still have some amount of income of one type or the other.

I would try to target rent under $1,000 per month for such housing

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